Null Set
by demonegg
Summary: His life had always been the same. Controlled. So it was pure chance he saved her that first night, fate that he saved her the rest. But the world had changed, and variables were bad, and he just knew they were playing a game neither could win.
1. Alpha

_I don't own FFVII or any of its characters. _

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Nine times out of ten, he worked in darkness.

It was natural, really. The night lent an air of credibility to his job, shielding it from too heavy of scrutiny.

Bystanders also forgot more quickly under the opacity of night. _Oh, it was nothing_, they would say to their neighbors one day in passing,_ Maybe a drunk or some vandal. I can't even remember who used to live there anymore.  
_  
He was a simple guard, a foot soldier. In the drudgery of his job, he occupied the lowest of low spots: night patrol in the slums. _Deal with the rabble-rousers, Grunt. They give you trouble--shoot 'em. But do it clean. They'll forgive a death or two there. Dem ain't gonna live much past thirty, no how. Might as well make it easier. It's the damn humane thing to do._

His whole life, he never wielded any power. Father left at five; shuffled between one relative after another; when he was fifteen, his mother slit her wrists one morning, standing over the percolator, waiting for the water to heat and make the last of the coffee; a knife from the drawer (an afterthought, like it had slipped her mind to slice his ham and cheese sandwich before waving him off to school); blood on the floor. He couldn't stop the current of crimson from staining her fair hair.

Somebody decided they should move him around some more, force him to go to school (forcing him to drop out). There was no hope in graduating when he didn't know who wrote the this-or-that treatise on government, who won That War--or that there was even a war, why the unemployment rate had increased a tenth of a percent, or what the difference was between a vertical asymptote and a horizontal one, barring the obvious (little did he know it all came down to x/0 versus 0/x. He was familiar with zero, but didn't give a damn about the variable, making it utterly impossible for him to pass ninth-grade algebra.)

He also didn't know it at the time, but this aversion to math intrigued the Powers That Be. It got him enlisted, even as a dangerously underweight, volatile teenager (or a despondent one, depending on the alignment of the stars, or was it the pull of his hormones?). Variables didn't matter. Give him a zero, show him a bottom line, and he knew what to do. The new regime fostered this kind of thinking. The flap of a butterfly's wings won't cause a thunderstorm if you exterminate every insect from Midgar to Wutai. Knock out the x, and you have order. _Peace._

Weeks passed, and they strapped a sword to his back and a number to his name, and suddenly civilians trembled before him: or the insignia on his uniform and the glint of his sword. He could kill with that blade--metal always trumped flesh--but kill 'em or put 'em in prison (a death sentence on either count): it didn't matter, as long as he followed orders.

Perhaps that's why, when he saw her there, lying in the alleyway between two overfull garbage cans, he paused, just for a moment.

She was pretty, albeit a little dirty--not that he was going to screw her--he wasn't like those _other _guards, even if in the past, he had spent his fair share of gil for a night on a decent bed with a back-alley beauty.

Orders were clear, though. She had been in a fight: blood on her shoe, gash across the abdomen, serrated slightly on one edge. Burn marks across the arm in the telltale branding of a ShinRa EMR. She had tangled with one of his older cousins in arms--the Turks. The punishment? A six-month, slow, agonizing death sentence in one of the camps around the Northern Crater--hell frozen over, if there ever was one. Bits and pieces of you alternately failed: some by ice, some by fire; some overtaxed, some chopped clean off (_Sayonara, Semper fi_). It was cruel, no doubt, to leave her to such a fate, but if she were to be found in _his_ sector on _his_ patrol, _his _head would roll.

But truth be told, he didn't feel like walking all the way to the booking post, or cleaning the blood off his sword in the morning, so he picked her up (his shift was almost over, anyways) and carried her back to his apartment. She moaned once or twice (was it a name?), when his arm wrapped around her shoulders and her head lolled against his chest. Carefully, he trekked back to his building, dodging lampposts and the busier street corners. Too many eyes roamed for a chance to sell out another for a small lining in their pocket. A soldier rescuing a criminal would not bode well for ShinRa's attempts to achieve order in the slums.

He made it up the stairs in his building, avoiding the lift (too risky with a bloody, unconscious girl in his arms); and fumbling with his keys a few times, he unlatched his door--unseen by any of his neighbors, as far as he could tell.

She groaned again when he set her on the bed, whimpered when he cleaned her wounds with a damp rag, twitched when he wrapped the worst of her cuts with whatever bandages he could find.

But she never awoke.

He was sure she'd open her eyes for some of his ministrations, but maybe she had lost more blood than he anticipated, or perhaps she'd forfeited the will to live and he was just prolonging the inevitable.

Whatever.

It was a damn stupid move to rescue her in the first place, and he knew it, but he figured he'd kick his own lamebrain ass over it in the morning.

He was tired, so he laid a blanket on the floor and fell asleep.

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The first thing he knew when he awoke the next day was that his back ached like hell and that he would probably spend his entire month's pocket change on a nice bed for the next few nights just to get it back in order.

The second was that she was gone, and he couldn't explain the twitch of his fingers when he realized he never caught her name.

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Thanks for reading! Please review on your way out.


	2. Beta

I don't own FFVII or its characters.

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The night passed, business as usual. His expression hadn't changed when he had shown up to work, but inwardly, he breathed a sigh of relief when no one questioned him about a certain dark-haired girl in a burnt miniskirt and bloody boots. He stood at attention for a couple of Turks, eying the metal bars at their waists (Was he the one? The Redhead? Were bits of her charred flesh still clinging to the electrodes?), but they didn't even have to feign indifference in his presence. He was nothing. Certainly he'd never be suspected. All was still well.

He made his rounds same as always. Stopped a robbery in progress. Blinked, then hauled the teenager to the holding cells; date and time noted, _Sign Here, Please_. He swiped his signature across the page and returned to his patrol.

He strained his neck only a little when he came to that alley. The trashcans still stood, erect and overbrimming with refuse. (No one had been by to comb the place for clues. Still safe.) He continued walking, and forced himself not to double check it as he passed. He had other alleys to watch.

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It was almost dawn when he heard it. His shift had just ended, and he was trudging home, tired and exhausted and back in spasms. A low moan, raspy and female, sounding dreadfully similar to those he had caught from Mystery Girl.

He turned the corner and spotted her, slumped against the railing of an isolated stairway not even a block from his home.

He stood for a moment, just staring at her. It seemed too far-fetched to believe that she had sat there all night, unnoticed as life leaked from reopened wounds. But it was quiet (too quiet?), and so completely still that not even a breeze rustled the garbage at his feet. (Was it an ambush? For a moment, he hated being a guard and not infantry. Basic training would have come in handy. A simple guard never had to know these things.)

But nothing was there. All clear.

_Move in, soldier._

He crept forward and knelt by her body. She looked utterly helpless there, head against the rusty iron grating, body sprawled supine across the steps. One arm near her head¸ the other limp and bleeding by her thigh; knees scraped from a collision with concrete. Her eyes were squinched shut, and a fresh bruise lay near her collarbone. A partially crusted burn mark oozed against the leather on her chest. She had blood under her fingernails.

It had happened again.

She reminded him of a picture he had seen once in a book (not that he was much of a reader, but there had always been the required literature in school). A girl floating in the water, dead, drowning, slipping into the fathoms below. That girl had been clean and dressed in white, a virginal sacrifice for one bastard king or another. But Mystery Girl was bloody in black, skin tattooed with bruises and scars. As for being a virgin, he didn't know, but he doubted anyone could be that innocent in the slums.

Her breath caught a few times, and he looked away.

He had no responsibility for this girl. Not one iota.

All he had to do was turn and walk the ninety yards to his apartment. Take a shower, watch some TV, go to bed (on _his_ bed).

He made it seven steps. Seven steps before he risked a sly glance back (was he being followed?), and saw through the shadows of his upraised fingers: Mystery Girl, still there, still bleeding. Breathing. Her chest heaved in spurts, and her jaw pulsed in pain--maybe she had a broken rib or two; he hadn't checked thoroughly.

He picked her up; her head bobbed against the concrete (Unintentional_._ He hadn't wanted to bludgeon the girl), and her hair traced along his arm as her skull drooped against weary muscles. Agitated rivulets of blood snaked down her skin. A gloved hand wiped away the drops weeping along the ends of her hair.

He maneuvered even more cautiously through the streets. Ran a little faster up the stairs to his apartment. It was riskier, in his mind, finding her so close to his home: the trail of blood wouldn't be as smudged and distorted by the dusty boots of passersby.

But he couldn't let himself think of that now. She was already on his bed, dripping blood onto his linoleum. He dressed her cuts more securely this time and made sure to unfurl his bed roll directly next to the mattress. When she got up, he'd be the first to know (he thanked the stars for the first time in his life. Surely it was luck that she wouldn't be heavy enough to hurt him). He smirked a little as he lay down. His plan was foolproof.

_A man risks his neck twice for a girl, and he wants to know why._

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The afternoon sun blinded him a little as it fingered along the edge of his blanket and crept up to his eyes. He was surprised she hadn't moved by this time, considering her escape the previous night.

He was even more surprised when he reached up to check on her. Instead of warm flesh (or hell, even cold. Anything would have made more sense than what he found), his hand encountered only a rough sheet of paper with three words scrawled on it. Lowercase, unbalanced letters when she found her fingers couldn't grip the pen. Red ink bled through both sides.

_thank you_

_stop_

He crumpled it up, threw it away, and showered for work.

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A special thanks to everyone who read and reviewed the first chapter! You guys totally made my day.

& As always, thanks for reading the new chapter. Please review.


	3. Delta

I don't own final fantasy or any of its characters.

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He nearly tiptoed through the payroll services that evening. He hated being in that wing. The last time he had approached the administrative offices, he had dropped off a SOLDIER application only to have it rejected two days later, a bright stamp covering his name (Almost funny, how could they even read it to return it to him?). Perhaps he had been naive--or fairly stupid--to think that he could enjoy the same esteem as The General or Genesis, or any of the other heroes littering the pages of the Midgar Daily News. But he had tried, and it still stung to see it had taken only forty-eight hours for the bureaucracy to cut through miles of red tape to reject him. Irrefutable confirmation that he'd die a guard, or maybe in infantry, if they ever sent him to the front. He couldn't imagine it to be worse than a stint in the slums, but it was possible.

Maybe.

He paused outside the cashier's door when he heard voices inside. He needed to pick up last month's check before ShinRa seized it and divvied it up as someone else's bonus. A holdup at the jail last week had caused him to miss the two hour block when they passed out the payrolls. And now he was venturing into a building he was never meant to enter, just to beg someone for a piece of paper that would let him survive until next Tuesday.

But that still didn't mean he wanted to run into anybody. Just get in, get out, get on with his life. (Too much to ask?)

Footsteps approached the door, and he ducked into an alcove as a thin blond girl exited the room, followed a minute later by three men dressed in black.

"Damn, Elena's looking fine today."

A low, grunted reply.

"Right, man. Not like the knockers on that one last night."

A third voice: "You're not being paid to play. The Boss wants this done quickly."

"Yeah, yeah. I know. Draw 'em out, round 'em up, ship 'em off. Protocol."

"You know what happened to the last recon group."

"Yeah, the _amateurs."_

"Just do your job."

"_Gaia._ Don't get your panties in a wad. We'll get the girl."

"And the child?"

"She can't hide her forever. S'just chill, yo. Double D ain't gettin' away."

He caught a heavy sigh and the echo of steady footsteps walking away. "Discretion. Try to use it this time."

He almost moved, but a mumbled curse and a kick to the wall pressed him further into the darkness.

"Fucker thinks he's all that."

"She's escaped us twice." (He didn't recognize this voice. The grunter?)

"Can I help it the bitch's got the nicest rack I've ever seen? How am I supposed to work with those mommas right in my face?"

Another muffled sound. (Definitely the grunter.)

"Chill, dude. We'll get it done. I just don't see why I can't have my fun first."

The voices echoed down the hallway, a door swung shut, and he retrieved his paycheck in silence.

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The night had been especially quiet. There was not even a fist fight to break up or a lonely girl looking to share a good time. (He wouldn't have minded the latter: two nights on the floor had wreaked havoc on his spine, and the siren call of a mattress, padded with the paycheck in his pocket, grew louder with each step he took.)

But eventually his shift ended, and he made it all the way back to his apartment without a disturbance. Switched on the furnace and shed his clothes, only to realize that he must have dropped his wallet--including the all-important paycheck--somewhere between the cashier's office and home. It was a long shot that it was still there, but without that money, he didn't have a prayer. He got dressed and emerged back into the slums.

Street after street, his feet traced over routine steps: left on First, right on Shi--- Avenue (_ShinRa? Shiny? Shit? No one knew for sure)_; looked both ways, crossed, and jumped over a fallen sign post; sword drawn, always prepared. Tired hands shone a flashlight into every gutter. Not a damn thing.

He pressed on.

Eventually, he reached the post, found nothing, and turned back home. A nagging sensation (paranoia?) urged him to double-check a few more dead-ends before retreating back to his apartment.

He came to an alley slightly out of his way (Had he come this way or not? Dawn had arrived, and it was getting harder and harder to remember); and froze when he spotted a girl in black (_Gaia. Not Mystery Girl again_) bending over a small child as the flashlight flickered over their forms. The girl spun around and attacked before he even had time to assess the situation. A fist exploded onto his jaw, and he fell onto the concrete. His hand reached for his sword, but stopped when he realized the follow-up punches never came. His eyes lifted to meet the wide, dark ones of a bruised brunette. They both remained immobile for a moment before he blinked and she took off down the alley, propelling the child and herself over a high wall. She spared him one last glance as she rounded the top.

He returned home, sore and a little confused and worried as hell about how he would manage without heat and electricity for four weeks, assuming he didn't get evicted (which, in all probability, would happen within a week); when he saw it, lodged halfway under his door.

His wallet. The same cracked, beaten piece of leather he had owned since high school. Nothing taken, but an unfamiliar spot of blood seeped along the crevasses.

No note. Still no name.

He shuddered.

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A/N: I apologize for the delay in posting this. I wrote this about three weeks ago, but then I became insanely busy, and something about it just seemed off to me. Still not 100 percent comfortable with it, so if you see something that could use improving, I'd love to know.

Again, thanks so much to everyone who reviewed last time! I think I forgot to respond to the messages, so I'll just acknowledge you here: agoraphobia, vx-Luna-xv, Cindy, Skyler, Avengingmyinnocence, elebelly. You guys rock. Feedback is so awesome.

Thanks for reading!


	4. t

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For the first time in five years, he showed up late to work. Any other job, and no one would have noticed. Oh, slept late, long night, too much to drink (glug glug, wink wink, nudge nudge). Of course, any other job didn't inevitably result in death, either. But working where he did created the perfect Catch-22. If he arrived early, the Bosses would question his sanity. _Der gotta be sum medicuhl reason fer dis. _They'd strap him to a chair, diagnose him as 'certifiable,' 'clinical,' 'unwell,' then hand him a blank discharge, tell him to sign his own name, and send him packing. He wouldn't be able to get a job after that. No one ever risked hiring someone ShinRa deemed unstable. _Unpatriotic, Citizen. ShinRa is the pillar of strength. We don't need your precarious mental state mucking up the works. Scram._

He'd end up a wanderer, for sure, killing monsters for food with that oversized sword still on his back, the normals still knock-kneed in front of him until ShinRa finally got around to exterminating one more pesky blemish on their perfect world. And he'd die—cold alone, and unclean.

The same fate if he showed up late. Shirking your duty, not dedicated enough to the cause. Punctuality is a virtue. Pick up your pay on the way out. Suddenly he'd find himself pressed against a crumbling wall, the opposite end of the blade pressed against his throat, ShinRa and a few hungry rats the only witnesses as he bled out on the pavement.

Dead again.

He thought he had fully resigned himself to this fate-- one could expect little else from working in the slums. He had heard of people desperately fending off death's final moments, begging, pleading, drinking their own piss just for one more chance. They all died anyways. Maybe they'd live a few more years, maybe they wouldn't, but death still came for them in the end, and they couldn't bargain their way out of it or run away. He wondered if they ever realized they hadn't avoided a damn thing.

But by some miracle, though, he didn't get fired. Even when they demanded to hear a story as unbelievable as his, they had let him slide—once, just this once, soldier.

He had crept in the doors silently that evening, sneaking towards the punch cards. He was sure his bosses-- and the day guards, for that matter--were in stitches at his hoping like hell that he could clock in and check out the slums without being stopped, that maybe if he worked anyways, they'd pity him (unlikely) or lose him in the paperwork (a possibility, he thought).

But when they caught him, he knew nothing would dampen the suspicion in his superiors' eyes. Sorry, Sir, couldn't sleep. (Den you shoulda got yer ass here earlier.) There was a small disturbance outside my apartment, and you know, someone was in trouble. (You ain't no goddamn missionary, grunt. Der's a disturbance, you get dem to jail, ya hear?) Well, it wasn't exactly a crime. Justall day, there was this kid screaming for her cat (You an animal lover now, or sumthin'?), and when I went outside to get her to shut up, there was this dog that came, and I kind of got caught in the middle. (We got ourselves a fuckin' good Samaritan here. Wadduyu care anyways? Dog's jest havin' a little fun.) Yessir. It won't happen again. (Jest get yer ass out on duty. Today's yer lucky day.)

He didn't believe in luck, not now, maybe not ever. She had never consciously shown her face around him, so for him to think about her twice in the span of one week was disconcerting, to say the least. He knew the way it worked, ShinRa banked on that: Nothing can override the status quo; Variables have to bend to balance the equation; For something given, something else must be taken away. This newfound luck was costing him. That he knew. What he couldn't understand was why it would bother to take something from nothing.

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He couldn't clear his mind all through his patrol. Random thoughts mostly: why he never had a pet growing up; did dogs really eat cats, or was that just an urban myth; Lady Luck, and what she looked like; would he know her if he saw her.

And, strangely enough, he couldn't stop thinking about the kid in the alley. A tiny thing, couldn't have been more than four or five, all sunshine in light colors and braids. And that cat—he never actually found it, but she had insisted it was there.

The more he thought about it, the less his mind could wrap around what he had been doing out there in the first place. Sure, she had been making an unholy amount of racket, whining for Red, or Blue, or Chartreuse, or whoever the hell it was. But he lived in the slums, where noise was the norm. And it was stupid—really, absolutely absurd—but he could've sworn he heard _Her_ gasping behind him after the whole ordeal was over.

Maybe he really was insane.

It must have seemed so to any passing civilian, when not even a few wayward gunshots broke his trance. He should have reacted—that was what he was trained to do—but he found himself strangely unconcerned, until he caught the crack of lightning and a startled yelp shrouded within a battle cry. He moved then. Something told him his ass would be on the line, if it weren't already.

He rounded the corner and caught a flash of black as she jumped down from a balcony and ran towards one of the byways. He wasn't sure what prompted it—maybe some residual instinct bestowed upon him by some half-noble, half-crazed ancestor (certainly, there had to be a legacy of insanity somewhere in his gene pool)—but he raced towards the retreating figure when everything inside him was screaming to walk away. This time, just walk away. But his legs wouldn't, or couldn't obey, and the next thing he knew, he was pressed up against the rusted tin of a dilapidated warehouse, grabbing the arm of the unknown criminal as she passed. Heavy boots thundered nearby, and he pulled her into the shelter of the building, as her eyes widened in shock and his hand flew over her mouth. Her free fist swung around to bloody her attacker but it stopped when she realized who it was, or that he wasn't hurting her. He didn't think she could see him in the darkness—he could barely see her himself—but maybe she figured he was safer than the Turks, or perhaps she had come to expect his presence.

They had developed a sort of routine between them.

He waited a long time before he finally relaxed his hand against her mouth. She turned around to meet his face and he could feel the grazing of her clothes when she brushed against him. But he didn't move—not until he felt her shift her weight away from him.

He reacted then. He pulled her by the arm towards the door and refused to let go until he peeked around the outside. She must have sensed that this was her cue to flee before the Turks returned, because he watched her dash to the end of the alley, then blinked a little when he saw her stop and look back. Brown eyes bore into him, and he stared back, until the faint echo of gunfire a few blocks away broke their moment and she sprinted into the shadows. The last thing he saw was a shy smile, and then he too, palms sweaty with the knowledge that he had just aided _and_ abetted a known criminal, took off for another part of the city.

He remembered hearing once in school that the human mind conjures seemingly insignificant, but vitally important images during a crisis.

Strange, then, wasn't it, how: for him, Lady Luck was a bruised brunette in a burnt miniskirt and bloody boots, and she was going to get him killed.

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* * *

Sorry about the delay. Between an unsavory situation to spending 30 some-odd hours in and out of planes or airports, I hadn't felt inspired (or had the energy) to write. There may be mistakes but I'm tired of proofing, especially when I still have 15 pages about high performance computing to check over for a friend.

That said, I hope you like it.

Please review.


	5. Sigma

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The Bigwigs had a name for it.

They who had a name for everything—although this one was especially noteworthy—referred to it as the Civilian Readjustment Process via Passive Deterrence against Future Acts of Organized Terrorism (otherwise dubbed Rule 242c).

He knew it as drowning cats.

Maybe it had started out as 'rats', maybe not, but somewhere amidst the lines of barrack talk spreading through the ranks, the lingo had evolved. Drop an r, add a c and about eight more lives.

Appropriate, given the rumors that kept popping up in the city.

Organized crime. Take one down, face five more. Kittens, even. Women. Children.

It wasn't all that unusual. Even the gentlest creatures had claws when they were fighting to survive and feel in control. Kids pelted stray dogs with stones. Starving moms sold their babies for a hit. Others left theirs behind on doorsteps without even a bushel basket or a note.

Not that they had any choice. Everyone in their right mind knew that.

It was like They said: Choice was an illusion.

Of course there were pamphlets that said otherwise, the kind that stuck to his boot all damp from the sewage leaking by the side of the road. Under orders he was supposed to pick them up and burn them immediately, not that doing so stopped anything. For all the trouble ShinRa went through to keep the insurgents at bay, information still got out about mako reactors and what they were doing to the planet: global warming (or was it freezing?), sucking Mother Gaia dry. Something like that. A couple of hooligans occasionally tagged a building with graffiti, and technically he was supposed to report or shoot at the various offensive claims and names (even if he had foregone the standard gun in favor of a sword), but most of the time he didn't bother. Within the hour they'd be up again on walls so pockmarked with bullet holes that it really didn't matter if he shot at them or not.

Even ShinRa had seemingly decided that it was a waste of bullets, which explained the extra thick glow emitted from the reactors and the subsequent brown-out in the slums as he patrolled that evening. It didn't happen too often, but still often enough that he knew what it meant.

Someone was drowning cats.

It occurred to him that maybe the name had come from one of those distant memories people had—either theirs or someone's else's—of sticking a cat in a bag when they were trying to deflea it. They tied it in some burlap, leaving its head out in the air (supposedly), and dunked the critter in the nearest body of water. It was a slow torture method, one that traumatized the cat far beyond the prospect of fleas, and not without good reason. Those who were careless or cruel ended up killing everything. Passively—as it wasn't human hands that flooded lungs or human legs that refused to tread water. It was survival of the fittest in its finest hour: man playing god with all of nature and winning.

ShinRa had more or less the same idea. Stick a bunch of insurgents in mako tanks to get them to talk or reform. Some would rat each other out, some wouldn't, and those who didn't lost their minds or their lives. It was a cheap and effective method of deterrence. Today's power from yesterday's terrorists, someone had said.

At least that's what he'd heard. Gossip was the only semi-reliable source of information anymore. Appearances deceived, reports lied. The news told half the story if it told it at all. Even if he had the clearance to view the tanks, he doubted it would make any more sense to him than what he could hear from the drunks in a local hole-in-the-wall bar.

Besides, the truth wasn't nearly as important as majority opinion. People acted on what they thought, and despite the fact that most people in the slums had an immunity to death, there was a distinct sense of self-preservation, even if it was based on a lie. It controlled their actions, manipulated their fears. Paid his rent. It was his job to maintain that status quo. If he had learned anything, it was that true or false, the situation never mattered as long as it was predicted and understood.

Hence his problem with Mystery Girl.

Two of the last four nights had been spent with a stranger in his bed. A stranger who, for all he could discern, served no practical purpose for his existence. If anything, she made it more precarious, batting around his thread of fate the way she did.

But yet for some stupid reason he didn't even know, he helped her. Night after night he cared for her. Made sure she would live to be found in trouble another day.

He still hadn't gotten a damn thing for it.

And now she had a kid.

That same familiar kid—still catless— now flung into his arms with pleading teary eyes and a silent cry for help.

He stood in shock, glancing between it and where Mystery Girl was standing between two guys in tacky leisure suits and an excess of gold jewelry. She raised her gloved fists, while they circled her, grunting to each other and cackling, "Here, Kitty, Kitty."

Mystery Girl swung her leg around, knocking one assailant in the head. He fell into an oily puddle, and his crony with brass knuckles and mohawk assaulted her from the back. Clanking a steel chain in one hand and taunting her with a switchblade in the other, he swung the chain around her throat, and she kicked out the chest of the man in the green jacket, as he stumbled up. A hook around the knee, and she ducked to flip Mohawk over and under her, releasing her from the chain. Green Jacket tossed a night stick between two hands and the child wailed when something crashed out of nowhere into Mystery Girl, but still no one advanced.

From his position near the mouth of the alley, he thought that he probably looked real stupid, a guard standing there holding a kid while a possible damsel in distress fought two against one. But she was good, injured and strong as she was. And job or not, it wasn't his fight.

That was until he caught a glimpse of a holster.

He didn't bother to think where this second death wish had come from—although again he was positive he didn't like it—but he ripped off his helmet and rushed to set the kid behind the garbage bins. He stuck her hands over her ears and his helmet over her eyes, before he slipped silently into the fray, jamming his sword between the girl and the blunt blow of a club.

He turned just enough to see her swing out to use the alley wall as leverage and flip behind her assailant, before he abruptly hacked his sword into the other's knife.

The switchblade whirred out of the guy's hand to stick in a patch of dirt, and Mohawk cursed, grinding a hand through his neon hair. "Look, look, we're on your side," he said, then dropped and rolled to grab his weapon and turn it on the girl who had spun into his vicinity.

Her eyes had gone wide and then there was the crash of a stick against her ribs and a knife poised at her heart.

He didn't waste time. In a second the hand was severed bottom up, and Mohawk screamed in pain before getting kicked into his companion and they fell on the ground.

Mohawk was still writhing and spitting demands for the bitch's head, when the blunt edge of the sword crashed into his skull, bruising the pavement with his blood.

Mystery Girl sprinted to cover the kid's position from the remaining attacker, and Green Jacket scrambled back to where his friend lay oozing brains on the asphalt and slammed a bloody fist on the ground. "Fucking ShinRa dogs!" he shrieked and then there was a click of a gun aimed at him or the girl or someone and then more blood and a sword from his chest and blood dribbling off Jacket's teeth.

The gun clattered to the ground, while Green Jacket fell back to sputter his last breaths in road sewage.

Vaguely he registered the sounds of the kid's frightened tears and Mystery Girl telling her it was okay but to keep her eyes closed. He made no effort to comfort either.

Instead he followed standard ShinRa procedure (or innate human curiosity) and nudged one head back with the tip of his sword for identification. It lolled to the side, and the tongue rolled down to the sidewalk. But on the bottom of the chin unstained with blood, he spotted the small telltale tattoo of a bumblebee burned into the flesh. A member of the Honeybees, the organization run by the infamous sleaze and whoremonger Don Corneo.

He turned to Mohawk, ratcheting him over, and spotted the same thing.

The mafia was after this girl.

Or more likely: ShinRa had the mafia after her.

He swallowed, blinked, and leaned down to wipe the blood off his sword on one guy's pants. Then he went over to Mystery Girl, who had picked up the kid and was pressing her helmetless head into her shoulder. She handed the headgear to him, and he slid it on without a word. He snapped his sword onto his back, then grabbed her hand to lead them to the edge of the alley.

He held it for a long moment at the curb, and after nodding and adjusting the child in her arms, she slipped into a nearby abandoned building. Presumably to take a short cut away from the eyes and ears in the public markets.

He walked away and headed the opposite direction to finish his patrol. He was determined not to be the one to report the bodies, and it would be stupid to follow her. Besides, he was almost sure they'd meet up again.

It was inevitable. Even if there had been no smiles this time.

Perhaps it was because both realized Shin-Ra was coming at her from all sides, throwing everything but their million-man army at a single girl. A girl who had somehow tangled with trained assassins and notorious gangsters and still come out alive.

All he could figure was that it was a game. A deadly one. Somehow she was getting played.

And not a word of it had leaked out to a guard in the slums.

xxxxx


End file.
